Digital Reef’s proposed London datacentre could emit 1M tonnes of CO2 annually, clashing with UK net zero goals

A proposed hyperscale data centre on the outskirts of London would pump out more than 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, according to planning documents. That’s roughly the carbon footprint of 27,000 flights from London to New York, packed into a single facility sitting on green belt land.

The project, developed by Digital Reef as part of the Reef Origin ecosystem, has been pitched as a potential “zero carbon facility.” The planning documents tell a different story, one that puts the development on a direct collision course with the UK’s legally binding net-zero targets.

What Digital Reef is building

The East Havering Data Centre campus would sprawl across approximately 175 hectares of land in North Ockendon, straddling the boroughs of Havering and Thurrock. The core development area covers about 40 hectares, with total floorspace projected between 330,000 and 400,000 square meters.

In terms of raw power, the facility is designed to deliver up to 600 MW of capacity distributed across multiple buildings. The original plan called for 10 units of 50 MW and 5 units of 20 MW.

The estimated price tag sits at £5.3 billion. Digital Reef has positioned the site near the Warley substation, a location chosen to facilitate low-latency connectivity for AI and cloud services.

Planned features include battery storage, a proposed hydrogen fuel cell system, and extensive landscaping that would incorporate an ecology park.

The gap between marketing and math

Digital Reef has at various stages described the project in terms suggesting compatibility with net-zero ambitions. The planning documents, however, indicate operational carbon emissions exceeding 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

To put that emissions figure in perspective, the UK’s total territorial greenhouse gas emissions were around 384 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in recent years. A single data centre adding another million tonnes would represent roughly a quarter of a percent of the entire country’s output from one building complex.

The project has been in discussion since 2022, and public consultation on the draft Local Development Order ran from March 6 to April 12, 2026. A final decision from the council is still pending.

The broader data centre dilemma

Major cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all seen their carbon emissions climb even as they’ve poured billions into renewable energy procurement. Google’s 2024 environmental report showed its emissions had risen nearly 50% since 2019, largely driven by data centre expansion.

The UK government has been actively courting data centre investment as part of its digital economy strategy. Economic projections for the East Havering project suggest thousands of local job opportunities.

Hydrogen fuel cells, which Digital Reef has proposed as part of the facility’s energy mix, remain a developing technology for data centre scale applications. Green hydrogen, produced using renewable electricity, could theoretically reduce the carbon footprint substantially, but green hydrogen production is still expensive and limited in supply.